"Under the terms of this partnership, Sprinks, a division of PRIMEDIA, was acquired by Google. As a result, the Sprinks advertising program will be replaced by Google AdWords over the next 30-40 days. In order to continue driving qualified traffic to your website, you will need to create a Google online advertising account with Google AdWords" (emphasis added).

If you're a regular reader here you will have seen in the past the editor's scathing review on Sprinks following some serious customer services errors, lack of conversions and general all-round dodgy tactics by the Sprinks team. It will be good to see Sprinks leave but it may be questionable what the use of About.com as a contextual advertising portal will do to the conversion levels for Google Adwords.

It's refreshing to see that part of the seedier side of the internet domain name registration industry is getting a lashing as the Commission issues a warning to Domain Names NZ (an Australian company) - .net offer liable to mislead.

October 24th, 2003

Google IPO rumours increase...

The rumours of the much awaited Google IPO appear to be taking on a tad more substance:

You may have noticed another hiatus in the nzbase.com search engine industry reporting. The editor has been under a mighty workload for the last six weeks and apologises for the break in service - transmission will resume soon ...